alt Hacker Newsif you are a school or similar which ordered a large stack of them in the last two years then yes, especially if multiple such organizations join together on a legal case.
In the end "help with migration to" isn't the same supporting the existing product.
And if you advertised a product with 10 year support that _is_ legally binding (in the EU) and a clear cut case of you losing around 10-20% of the advertised value.
Given that legal costs might be to some degree covered by legal insurance and it being a clean cut case this is likely worth the money. But also a case where google can "just settle and not care" as in many cases schools did more things like forcing parents to buy chrome books then buying them themself, so it's unlikely to amass any relevant damage amount for Google.
More funny would be if the judge rules "10 years promised? You are cable of delivering 10 years?! You have to deliver it! And for all chrome books bought [8;10[ years before the deadline not just the suing party".
Replies
> In the end "help with migration to" isn't the same supporting the existing product.
I don't know that that's clearly true. Apple gives at least 5 to 7 years of updates past the last sale date for computers. (I don't know if this is an explicit promise or not; they have an explicit hardware support for 5 years and limited support for vintage [5-7 years old] equipment.)
I don't think I get to demand 5 years of support for specifically Sonoma or Tahoe on that equipment, but rather just N years of "some usable version of an OS and support to transition to it".
Replacing ChromeOS with GooglebookOS 8 years from now seems not that different from replacing Tahoe with Golden Gate.
The other alternative could be "we still support ChromeOS for 10 years, and will release security patches for all critical vulnerabilities that we find and fix after 2034" (but we might privately not look that hard for them...)
Thing is, not every country in the world is trigger happy with lawsuits like in US, so there is a very high chance it goes nowhere, depending on the jurisdiction.
Likewise many legal insurances have footnotes regarding how far they are actually going to support you in a claim process.
I don’t think school districts have the necessary thousands of highly-paid lawyers it would take to scare Google. Schools might join a class-action and get 20% credits for the 2 years of lost support, towards their next purchase, which Google will make sure is a little bit more expensive. The schools aren’t going to switch to Macs that cost literally 2x and are more fragile.
Besides, I’d be shocked if any Chromebook lasts 8 years in a school! Kids literally stick metal in the ports to fry them on purpose, and drop and throw them, etc.
Not saying Google is good, just that they don’t care about this and have no business need to care.